Nikon Marketing Problems

Looks like Nikon is on the downside of market success. I predict Fujifilm will out-design and out-market Nikon in the near term. It only takes a few years of inept executive decisions to kill a brand. Just ask RCA.

Looks like Nikon is on the downside of market success. I predict Fujifilm will out-design and out-market Nikon in the near term. It only takes a few years of inept executive decisions to kill a brand. Just ask RCA.

Perhaps you could post some "marketing problems" or what is causing the downside of their success.

Or will this just be yet another thread where the OP never returns to the thread?

4. Nikon hired a teen idol to promote their cheap girly cameras, even though that segment is using their cell phone as a party pix camera. Teenaged girls are killing photography as an artform.

5. Nikon product design department is playing it safe with too many models offering too many features to satisfy their short-sighted,make-the-month dealers. The entire industry has been dumbed down, just like what happened to the US TV industry when manufacturers committed suicide with black plastic cabinets making TVs a commodity. Circuit City won the price battle but lost the war. Just like RCA, Zenith, Magnavox. Classic design-by-committee marketing.

6. Nikon is playing hardball with non-authorized service centers. Ready-Fire-Aim.

7. Nikon should not burden cameras with video. If they want to make porn tell them to buy a dedicated video camera from Panasonic or Sony.

8. Finally, Nikon should not have let film be killed off by editorial and wedding photographers who need the advantages of digital. Nikon should have setup a new division to support art photographers whose needs are different. Yes, this niche market could have survived, but the corporate mindset is beancounter influenced by execs who are driven to max their bonus.

Nikon, like RCA/Magnavox/Zenith, is killing their own brand image and could be out of the camera business in 5 years. Don't laugh...it is very hard to survive without a dedicated dealer base. Big box outlets can't sell high-tech. Remember Circuit City?

4. Nikon hired a teen idol to promote their cheap girly cameras, even though that segment is using their cell phone as a party pix camera. Teenaged girls are killing photography as an artform.

But a great marketing decision...sales really jumped

5. Nikon product design department is playing it safe with too many models offering too many features to satisfy their short-sighted,make-the-month dealers. The entire industry has been dumbed down, just like what happened to the US TV industry when manufacturers committed suicide with black plastic cabinets making TVs a commodity. Circuit City won the price battle but lost the war. Just like RCA, Zenith, Magnavox. Classic design-by-committee marketing.

Subjective opinion without understanding business models.

6. Nikon is playing hardball with non-authorized service centers. Ready-Fire-Aim.

About time they took control for standardization.

7. Nikon should not burden cameras with video. If they want to make porn tell them to buy a dedicated video camera from Panasonic or Sony.

Shows you have little business background. No disrespect intended

8. Finally, Nikon should not have let film be killed off by editorial and wedding photographers who need the advantages of digital. Nikon should have setup a new division to support art photographers whose needs are different. Yes, this niche market could have survived, but the corporate mindset is beancounter influenced by execs who are driven to max their bonus.

Nikon didn't do that....the photographers not buying film cameras did.

Nikon, like RCA/Magnavox/Zenith, is killing their own brand image and could be out of the camera business in 5 years. Don't laugh...it is very hard to survive without a dedicated dealer base. Big box outlets can't sell high-tech. Remember Circuit City?

Then why are camera sales in general dropping with DSLR sales slightly rising?

Really? So you would want Best Buy to go under like Circuit City? And that fixes what? Retail outlets survive by how their business is run, not by how products are sold to them. How is this a marketing snafu? They are expanding their retail outlets allowing them to sell more product. That would be a marketing success.

4. Nikon hired a teen idol to promote their cheap girly cameras, even though that segment is using their cell phone as a party pix camera. Teenaged girls are killing photography as an artform.

Blaming teenage girls? Seriously? Got you to notice, so again marketing success.

5. Nikon product design department is playing it safe with too many models offering too many features to satisfy their short-sighted,make-the-month dealers. The entire industry has been dumbed down, just like what happened to the US TV industry when manufacturers committed suicide with black plastic cabinets making TVs a commodity. Circuit City won the price battle but lost the war. Just like RCA, Zenith, Magnavox. Classic design-by-committee marketing.

Seems to me they are giving the public what they want. That would be marketing success.

6. Nikon is playing hardball with non-authorized service centers. Ready-Fire-Aim.

Nikon is simply doing what many, many other manufacturers across the world are doing. This has nothing to do with marketing.

7. Nikon should not burden cameras with video. If they want to make porn tell them to buy a dedicated video camera from Panasonic or Sony.

Nikon is giving the buying public what they want, again marketing success.

8. Finally, Nikon should not have let film be killed off by editorial and wedding photographers who need the advantages of digital. Nikon should have setup a new division to support art photographers whose needs are different. Yes, this niche market could have survived, but the corporate mindset is beancounter influenced by execs who are driven to max their bonus.

So now you are blaming Nikon for killing off film? Seriously? What does this have to do with marketing?

Nikon, like RCA/Magnavox/Zenith, is killing their own brand image and could be out of the camera business in 5 years. Don't laugh...it is very hard to survive without a dedicated dealer base. Big box outlets can't sell high-tech. Remember Circuit City?

What does a retailer have to do with a manufacturer? Nikon out of business within 5 years? Now I know your entire post has been a troll but I was happy to play along, I needed the laughs this morning You don't happen to write for the Onion do you?

Great list. Smells a lot like trolling, but just on the off chance you're serious, I'll address some of your "points", in the context of Fuji in particular (because, in your world, "Fujifilm will out-design and out-market Nikon in the near term", and in the context of the camera industry, in general).

Yeah. The cameras didn't sell, and were discontinued. Where's the 35mm film SLR in Fuji's catalog (they used to make them, you know), or the rangefinders, or the point and shoots, or the bridge cameras? Where's the xpan?

2. Nikon no longer updates their scanner software and parts support is lacking.

As opposed to Fuji's state-of-the-art scanner software for their well supported scanner line...

even though that segment is using their cell phone as a party pix camera. Teenaged girls are killing photography as an artform.

Whatever...

5. Nikon product design department is playing it safe with too many models offering too many features

Fuji has even more models.

to satisfy their short-sighted,make-the-month dealers. The entire industry has been dumbed down,

And your savior Fujifilm led that charge. They were making fashion cameras when Nikon was doing bulky swivel-lens boxes.

Those that don't know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

just like what happened to the US TV industry when manufacturers committed suicide with black plastic cabinets making TVs a commodity. Circuit City won the price battle but lost the war. Just like RCA, Zenith, Magnavox. Classic design-by-committee marketing.

6. Nikon is playing hardball with non-authorized service centers. Ready-Fire-Aim.

You mena, when they brought their policies into line with the way some of their competition, including Holy Fuji, had been doing for decades? You are kinda out-of-touch with what's going on in hte industry, aren't you?

7. Nikon should not burden cameras with video.

Fuji did it first on their point-and-shoots, and they were the first to put liveview on a DSLR (all the "burden" of video is, is writing the liveview to flash).

8. Finally, Nikon should not have let film be killed off by editorial and wedding photographers who need the advantages of digital. Nikon should have setup a new division to support art photographers whose needs are different.

And you have the market research to prove that this would be an effective business model for a multibillion dollar business? Even though you demonstrated so much erroneous information?

Yes, this niche market could have survived, but the corporate mindset is beancounter influenced by execs who are driven to max their bonus.

Nikon, like RCA/Magnavox/Zenith, is killing their own brand image and could be out of the camera business in 5 years. Don't laugh...

But you're so very funny, I can't help it.

it is very hard to survive without a dedicated dealer base. Big box outlets can't sell high-tech. Remember Circuit City?

You worked for Ritz, right? Bitter about the liquidation? Which, of course, is all Nikon's fault, because they didn't give them as big loans to default on, the way Canon did...

4. Nikon hired a teen idol to promote their cheap girly cameras, even though that segment is using their cell phone as a party pix camera. Teenaged girls are killing photography as an artform.

I do find that annoying, but that doesn’t mean it is a bad marketing move. This advertising will get some people to buy the Nikon-1 models, and it encourages me to not buy that series but only consider the DSLRs.

Nikon, like RCA/Magnavox/Zenith, is killing their own brand image and could be out of the camera business in 5 years. Don't laugh...it is very hard to survive without a dedicated dealer base. Big box outlets can't sell high-tech. Remember Circuit City?

Japan doesn’t organize its industry as does the United States. It doesn’t subscribe to the sink-or-swim philosophy of business. A big reason that most brands of cameras are
Japanese
is that Japan does not force manufacturers to compete on price.

RCA, Magnavox, and Zenith failed because they had to compete on price, which is ultimately a good way of going out of business.

I agree completely. I never said it wasn't. It was creative, artistic, and surreal, and I love surreal.

It just also happens to disprove the OP's hallucinogenic claims that Fuji is going to beat Nikon at, well, something (the OP is a little hazy on that) because Nikon has video, markets to trendy girls, and "does porn".

Nikon fanboys are very protective of Their turf.
I agree that Nikon's days are numbered, at least if you
consider being bailed out a failure.
Though maybe their own family will just keep supporting them.

Pentax was already rescued, Olympus is already over the brink.
I don't know about Fugi, they are pretty resourceful.

What's left in camera advancement once all the point and shoots
are replaced with iphones, and eveyone has cheap, small, full-frame
offerings for the serious amatuer?

Mirrors gone or not, refinements will come along such as in focusing, optics,
viewfinders etc., but the main thrust will be sensor developement.
Nikon and Canon's lens sales will start to weaken
as far as amateur use goes, being replaced by
ultra high pixel sensors for shorter range telephotos.

Sonys' The dominant force, having the best sensor for
both the high end and point and shoot markets, though this
has yet to pan out in sales, but give it time.
Brilliant idea, a small high IQ truely Pocketable point and shoot.
Sony is the one pulling out all the stops, I guess they have the resources
to do it, and the least to lose?

Samsung and Panasonic are on Sonys' coat tails, and
Canon isn't about to bow out of the game.
Canon at this point may seem a little slow, but they market to
make a profit.
Sooner than later the camera business is going to hit the ceiling,
and somebody has to fall by the wayside.

Sony is the company that is losing money, not Nikon. I agree Sony makes great sensors that are usually much better in Nikon cameras than Sony's, probably due to different toppings. Sony's largest share of the camera market is in P&S which is the segment that will be severely impacted by cell phone cameras. They don't have the lenses, installed base or the reputation to compete in the serious amateur or pro markets.

If the market goes to EFV, it won't be hard for either Nikon or Canon to compete. Much easier than developing the lenses that Sony will need.

s majesk
wrote:

Nikon fanboys are very protective of Their turf.
I agree that Nikon's days are numbered, at least if you
consider being bailed out a failure.
Though maybe their own family will just keep supporting them.

Pentax was already rescued, Olympus is already over the brink.
I don't know about Fugi, they are pretty resourceful.

What's left in camera advancement once all the point and shoots
are replaced with iphones, and eveyone has cheap, small, full-frame
offerings for the serious amatuer?

Mirrors gone or not, refinements will come along such as in focusing, optics,
viewfinders etc., but the main thrust will be sensor developement.
Nikon and Canon's lens sales will start to weaken
as far as amateur use goes, being replaced by
ultra high pixel sensors for shorter range telephotos.

Sonys' The dominant force, having the best sensor for
both the high end and point and shoot markets, though this
has yet to pan out in sales, but give it time.
Brilliant idea, a small high IQ truely Pocketable point and shoot.
Sony is the one pulling out all the stops, I guess they have the resources
to do it, and the least to lose?

Samsung and Panasonic are on Sonys' coat tails, and
Canon isn't about to bow out of the game.
Canon at this point may seem a little slow, but they market to
make a profit.
Sooner than later the camera business is going to hit the ceiling,
and somebody has to fall by the wayside.

Good post. I learned some things. This is an interesting topic and I hope the others here will reply without the lecturing. With so many people happy with telephone cameras why is Nikon promoting to teenage girls who really do not need a point & shoot for party pix.

So, then what is Nikon going to do when the pink camera market dies? What if Fuji's new sensor technology goes FF and outperforms Nikon sensors with the traditional array?

Nikon has wonderful glass, but they are promoting silly stuff like video and ISO. Reminds me of car brands promoting their cup holders. To be blunt; what if Nikon marketing mgrs. are driving the company off the cliff? Could Nikon camera division go out of business? I say, YES.

Why? Because they are walking away from the independent camera shops and repair centers. Nikon is cocky and will be overtaken in the next 5 years. Book it Danno.

You are right on, my friend. It will be interesting--from a business point of view--to watch as the industry commits suicide. The marketplace dynamics of the camera industry is following in the steps of the old American TV industry. The TV factory cemetery is crowded with the tombstones of RCA, Magnavox, Zenith, Curtis-Mathes, ColorTrak, Dimensia, XL-100, Philco, Sylvania, Philips, and GE.

I hear Fuji is not all that committed to their camera business, even though to outsiders like me, they seem very proactive and I am very impressed. I also see Panasonic brand having some stones and we need to remember that Matshushita has huge resources and R&D budgets. Canon and Nikon seem to be playing it safe, copying each other. Maybe a totally new brand get into the game with a real camera with beautiful design. Like, maybe that little design firm called APPLE! So, what does your crystal ball say?

Dear God, I don't remember calling you a name. Why all the hostility? I am just a little defenseless film shooter, part of the 1% who is routinely beat up by the other 99%. Wow. Talk about thin-skin. It is more of the tyranny of the majority which I have discussed earlier. I really don't understand why so many are so mean. Lighten up, let's go have a beer. i am not gonna take away your wonderful digital camera.